Chapter 5: Chapter 2: Perfect Pitch
To Chen Zhuo, this was just a simple ratio calculation problem.
「Five minutes later.」
Chen Zhuo picked up his bow and played the four open strings he had just tuned.
"So—Re—La—Mi—"
Although the sound was still a bit dry, the purity of its pitch stood out sharply in the room, which was filled with the hum of electricity.
Chen Jianguo, who was smacking the television, stopped what he was doing.
He couldn’t read music, but he thought those last few notes sounded particularly... pleasant?
It felt like taking a sip of pure water, completely free of impurities.
「The next day at his lesson.」
As usual, Teacher Zhao picked up Chen Zhuo’s violin to tune it for him.
She took out a tuning fork, struck it, held it to her ear, and then plucked Chen Zhuo’s A string.
Teacher Zhao’s hand froze.
She glanced at Chen Zhuo in surprise and plucked it again.
They were a perfect match. Not off by the slightest degree.
"Did your dad tune your violin for you?" Teacher Zhao asked.
"No," Chen Zhuo answered honestly. "I tuned it myself."
"Yourself?" Teacher Zhao was incredulous.
A six-year-old might not even have the hand strength to turn the pegs, let alone hear the correct pitch.
Many children who had been studying for two or three years still had to use a piano to find each note while tuning.
"Tune this string again."
Teacher Zhao deliberately loosened the D string a great deal and handed the violin to Chen Zhuo.
The other children and parents in the classroom all looked over.
Chen Zhuo took the violin. He didn’t use the bow to listen as other children would; instead, he clamped the instrument between his legs and plucked the string like a guitar.
PLUNK...
’Too loose. Probably only 280 Hz.’
Expressionless, Chen Zhuo twisted the tuning peg.
In his mind, he searched for the coordinates of "Re."
Twist, listen.
Twist again, listen again.
His movements weren’t fluid—they were even a bit clumsy. His hand slipped several times, failing to get a firm grip.
A chubby kid nearby snickered.
But Chen Zhuo paid it no mind. His world had shrunk to the vibration of that one string.
One last fine-tuning.
PLUNK.
Chen Zhuo let go and handed the violin to Teacher Zhao. "It’s ready."
Teacher Zhao skeptically picked up the bow and drew it across the D string.
The moment the note rang out, Teacher Zhao’s pupils contracted.
Perfect.
Too perfect.
Not the "good enough" kind of perfect, but the kind you get from an electronic tuner—a pitch so precise it didn’t waver in the slightest.
"Do you have absolute pitch?" Teacher Zhao’s voice cracked.
Chen Zhuo blinked blankly. "Absolute what?"
He didn’t understand the term. He only knew that if he didn’t adjust the string to that exact position, something in his brain felt wrong, like having a splinter lodged in it.
Teacher Zhao took a deep breath, and as she looked at the impassive child before her, the way she saw him completely changed.
She had always thought this child was a blockhead—stiff, emotionless, his playing like sawing wood.
But she had forgotten that in this world, there is a gift far rarer than "emotion."
Precision.
Emotion can be cultivated, and technique can be practiced, but a pair of ears that can distinguish the minuscule difference of a few hertz is a God-given talent.
"Chen Zhuo."
For the first time, Teacher Zhao knelt, bringing her gaze level with Chen Zhuo’s. Her tone grew exceptionally solemn.
"From now on when you practice, don’t think about whether it sounds pleasant or not. Just go with your feeling. Wherever you feel the note is most comfortable, that’s where you should play it."
Chen Zhuo nodded.
He liked that instruction. ’Isn’t this just a fill-in-the-blanks problem?’
From that day on, Chen Zhuo’s playing changed.
It was still devoid of emotion, still dry and mechanical.
But the scales he played were as if measured with a ruler.
Every note landed precisely on its proper frequency, and his rhythm was as steady as a Swiss watch.
「The recital, six months later.」
The other children played "Spring in Xinjiang," swaying their heads with expressive faces. Though their intonation was all over the map, they won rounds of applause from the parents.
Then it was Chen Zhuo’s turn.
He stood center stage in an ill-fitting little suit, as motionless as a wooden post, his face completely blank.
He played one of the simplest etudes: the first from the *36 Etudes* by Kayser.
It was composed entirely of rapid sixteenth-note runs.
DA-DA-DA-DA, DA-DA-DA-DA...
In the audience, Chen Jianguo’s palms were sweating. He was terrified his son would forget the music or play a wrong note.
But Chen Zhuo didn’t.
His right wrist was still a bit stiff, but the fingers of his left hand moved like a precision dot-matrix printer, rising and falling rapidly on the fingerboard.
There were no dynamic changes, no emotional swells.
The entire audience was silent.
The parents who weren’t musically inclined found the boy’s playing uninteresting, like a monotonous chant.
But the few professional teachers sitting in the front row felt a chill run down their spines as they listened.
Because from beginning to end, across hundreds of notes, not one was weak, and not one was off-key.
Even when he shifted positions, the duration of the slide was controlled down to the millisecond.
The piece ended.
Chen Zhuo lowered his violin and took a bow, his face still holding the same dazed, sleepy expression.
Only he himself knew that for the past three minutes, his brain had been operating at an incredible speed.
Each note was a coordinate point, and his fingers were performing a precise spatial vector calculation.
Although the effort made his brain ache, it was exhilarating.
’This is way more exciting than copying formulas at the library.’
’This was an empirical demonstration of turning physical laws into sound.’
Scattered applause rose from the audience, mostly from Chen Jianguo and his wife.
Teacher Zhao stood behind the curtain, watching Chen Zhuo’s back as she muttered to herself:
"That’s not playing the violin... he’s a human metronome."
Of course, that was a story for another time.
For now, he was just a six-year-old boy who, having finished playing, wanted nothing more than to go home and sleep.
"Dad, I want a roasted sausage from the stand outside."
Stuffing his violin into its case, Chen Zhuo spoke to his father, who had come up to meet him.
It was the first time all day he had shown a truly childlike desire.
After all, excessive mental calculation really does make a person hungry.
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